Ouroboros Complex
By: Serendipity
Chapter Three: he might not make it home
The time has come to make all your wishes
And burn, burn, burn, burn, burn all your bridges
And hope they remember you as something more than just a failure
Something more than a life without it's key
-'Wave Goodbye', Framing Hanley
There was something a random wise sage said about living by the sword and dying by the sword, but in the end he wasn't that lucky. It was probably one of those sayings Master Splinter talked about that didn't really fit what happened in real life anyway, but that didn't mean that he had to like it when the saying backfired on him.
In the end, he died by inches on a table, and the blades cutting his body were scalpels, not swords.
Not that he knew anything at the time, not when he was getting together a bunch of stuff to go play superhero with. No costume this time, he was pretty sure Leonardo had thrown the thing away somewhere he couldn't find it. His vengeance would be swift and merciless. Michelangelo figured he'd have to plot it for a week, while trying to dig out that costume from wherever pit Leonardo stashed it in. He was fairly sure that it was actually thrown away, but he wouldn't put it past his brother to stash it someplace impossible to find in the hopes that he'd forget about it.
Forget. Bah. Clearly they missed the memo on how superheroing was a full time gig. Michelangelo finished rummaging hopelessly through his stuff in a last-ditch effort to find his cape. Definitely not there. He was going to have to replace the entirety of Leonardo's incense with sparklers. That would show him the meaning of regard for personal belongings. Michelangelo thought this with the full experience of someone who had made a profitable practice of stealing his brother's Halloween candy.
He'd been thinking something about the evening, about how quiet it had been lately in the city, no outbreaks of anything. There wasn't much going on that night. It was going to be kind of boring, and not the kind of boring that starts out boring but ends up fun, but the kind of night watch that only offers up a mugging or a purse snatching without even the vague promise of a supervillain or a rogue ninja. That's what he'd thought. Quick run around town, get some fresh air, get back in time for hardass Leo to try and whip him into shape. No problem.
Speaking of his Hardassness (Or was it hardassery? His noble hardass highness? He of the hard ass?), Leonardo caught his eye just as he was about to slip quietly and, he thought, unobtrusively out. Drat. Foiled again. No more sneaky schemes for this ninja. Clearly he was going to have to polish up on his art of moving in the shadows if he was going to slip out on the supreme god of ninjutsu in the future. As it was, he gave a wide, unassuming grin and shrugged his shoulders innocently.
"Hey, Leo," he said. Don't sound twitchy, nervous, or desperate, he thought. All of those were signs of him being Up To No Good, even when he was totally out doing the best kind of Good and elevating society. He was to speak in a flawlessly casual voice. He was cool. Cool as a cucumber. Cool as lemonade.
"Mikey," Leonardo said, with a note of responsible older brother frustration, which Michelangelo personally thought was unfair of him. It wasn't as though he'd done anything yet.
"What?" he asked, straightening up a little, "That was your 'I'm gonna start me up a talk' voice, and that's not fair. I mean, I just said hello. Can't we wait until I crack a bad joke or something? That pre-emptive leadering has got to go."
But Leonardo was not to be dissuaded by something as petty as common decency. No, he was ninja god and he would have his say. And by that, he meant that he would stand there like a staring rock. Because he knew that Michelangelo quite easily buckled under staring pressure. It wasn't fair of him to capitalize on Michelangelo's weaknesses, but there he was, the nefarious jerk.
He heaved a dramatic sigh. "Relax, I'm not going to pull any pranks just yet, although I owe you one big time. I'm just heading up for a bit to stretch my legs."
"Can't you wait for Don and Raph to come back?" Leonardo folded his arms. He was a perennial mother hen. Not that anyone would tell him that to his face, but for god's sake, it was seriously like having a bizarre, ninja mom. Only a dude. Who would crouch nearby and glare at you and mutter threateningly about trying not to wander aboveground alone, and did they finish practicing, and not to spill the cereal because of ants.
"That'll take too long." Michelangelo smiled easily, crossed his arms in deliberate parody of his brother. "Come on, it'll be fine. I'll bring mace and try not to wear a short skirt and watch my drink and everything. Besides, no one can touch The Turtle Titan-"
"Have a good night, Mikey," Leonardo ruthlessly cut him off, returning the smile as he did so with a quieter one of his own.
That was it. Really, he would have liked to say it was a special moment, or a pivotal moment, or that something amazing was revealed. That he was leaving on a note that gave someone impact, but that was his last conversation at home, his last talk with a brother. No one really got to choose what they were doing the hour before they fell into danger, no one could foresee and plan what they would do in the weeks before they died. (oh god, the weeks, he'd died for weeks, slow and endless.)
But, really, he thought. He could have spoken for longer. He could have said goodbye. Could have said more.
Could have, could have.
Michelangelo left on the same note that he did most nights: 'good night, I'll be back, make some popcorn so we can watch a movie,' and his brother left him leave with the same expectation that he'd return. It was a nice night. Warm: spring-warm without the heavy humidity of mid-summer, a cool breeze, a bright night sky. The sort of evening you'd expect people went out to movies or long walks in.
He liked those nights more than the cloudy, pitch-dark ones that shrouded them more effectively in shadows, or the rain-drenched ones that gave partial concealment through the sheets of slicing rain. Those were better for ninjas, but this kind of night was better to run in, to enjoy life, to feel like he was part of the city for once. Sometimes, his brothers would goof around on nights like this, like they were real teenagers having fun, and those were the sort of memories Michelangelo would polish up and store. Maybe it was because he wasn't thinking of being a ninja that he was captured. Could have been his mind just wasn't in the right state. It wasn't as though he was known for his talent for concentration. He'd always been the easiest to surprise.
This was what his brothers never saw.
It was a mugging, he remembered. He'd heard a woman screaming, a man angrily snarling, and the heavy thump of a fist hitting flesh. Didn't occur to him as strange, because it was New York City. Muggings weren't uncommon. Michelangelo had been through this song and dance routine before. Go down, deliver one well-placed kick or punch, whichever he wanted at the time, flee to the shadows before the helpless victim noticed that their rescuer was a little less human than most. It was routine at this point, not something to bother thinking about, and definitely not something to immediately suspect.
Besides, even if he'd been ninety-nine percent sure of it being a trap, he wasn't going to risk that one percent and leave someone alone and helpless. That was just not cool. Of course he had to go rushing to the rescue.
Michelangelo chose the simplest method of approach- leap down from the roof to a lower fire escape, and then simply launch himself at the mugger's head and shoulders, bearing him down to the ground. Not fancy, but why bother being fancy with some third-rate mugger who probably didn't even know how to hold his knife right? There was no reason to waste perfectly good advanced ninjutsu on someone like that. Which was, of course, what they had planned on all along.
He launched a perfect attack on Mugger Number Five-Hundred Thirty-Eight in this City, aiming a flawless kick to the space between his shoulder blades and sending him crashing to the ground, face-first. He estimated at least a broken nose from a fall like that.
Around that point was when he heard the ominous click of a weapon he knew was aimed at him, and he glanced back in a half-second that seemed to drag through molasses-thick time, and found himself staring right into the barrel of a gun.
The helpless female victim looked at him with grim, set eyes and a determined set to her mouth, and he suddenly began to notice things like how she knew how to hold that gun perfectly, and how her stance was flawless. She glared coldly at him, her hands steady, her gaze unflinching. How the weapon he initially mistook for a gun was hijacked alien technology with the letters EDF in bold engraved print on the side. All of this he took in for a fraction of a second, and then he froze.
They used to scold him about that, in practice and in battle. He was the fastest, but in the end, it didn't matter how fast you were when your legs refused to move. His mind would go blank, his limbs would go stiff and heavy, his thoughts would race and chatter and freeze. (stop it mikey you'll get killed doing that watch your back mikey pay attention you can't afford to freeze in battle you'll get killed.) Somewhere between fight and flight his mind would shut down in a terminal case of indecision. That night was the last time he would ever face that choice.
He froze for three seconds. Enough time for the man behind him to shoot him in the shoulder with a heavy-duty sedative.
End game. And what a way to go.
The last thought he had going down was that Leonardo was going to get pissed at him for getting caught. It never occured to him that he might not make it out.